It's been said time and time again here at Worldtempus : watches have shrunk. Over the past four or five years, case diameters have gone under the 42 mm average mark, and even 41as the trend keeps trending. Nowadays, a large watch is a sports watch, necessarily. That's bad news for a number of people. I've recently had the case of a person built like a small tree (6''1, 210, arms the size of my thighs). He was questionning me about watches that would fit him. He didn't want a sports timepiece, but a refined, dress watch that would agreee with his linebacker physique. 
And I had nothing. I should have been able to tell him, there and then, that is was the simplest thing, that he only had to check this and that out. But his parameters were so special and odd these days that I just didn't know. So there still exists a target audience that's built like a Scottish strongman, with taste and a sense of propriety. They wear beautiful jackets (size 44), beautiful ties (9 cm wide) and they don't want to pair them with a 45 mm dive watch just because they haven't found anything else that's big enough for them. Let me also add that the idea is not to suggest a piece with 6 complications : albeit large, it would naturally be too expensive.
The pitch is simple : find recent, dressy, large timepieces that don't cost an arm AND a leg. Well, there simply aren't that many. For starters, there's nothing beyond the 44 mm mark. The giants that roam the earth will have to choose something from an older collection, or go for the sporty option. And in order to have a decent enough selection, I've had to stretch the definition a little.
A L.U.C Quattro from Chopard ticks all the boxes with its 43 mm case, as it's rather flat (and therefore spreads on the wrist). A 44 mm Panerai Luminor Marina is a little above board because even if it's a dress, white-dial Panerai, it's still, well, a Panerai. An IWC Portugieser Chronograph is perfectly swanky but is it large enough ? The answer isn't on paper as 41 mm might seem a little small, but rather in the fact that its bezel is so thin that it actually wears more like a 43. Same thing with a Bovet 19Thirty : the case is 42 mm but the bow around the bezel at 12 o'clock make it wide beyond its specs.
The lesson here is that one cannot decide on a picture or an article. In this instance more than maybe any other, it's the way that watch feels on the wrist that is the actual truth. It's to be decided on site, with the right shirt. Yes, you need to show up in the store with the appropriate attire. You wouldn't buy a pair of cordovan double monks wearing white cotton socks and olive drab fatigues, right ? Same goes for a watch : it deserves the right context.
